


Prince of Siam

by alittlepieceofgundamwing_archivist



Series: Spectator [8]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Childhood, Flashbacks, Gen, Oz Fic, light pre-13+6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlepieceofgundamwing_archivist/pseuds/alittlepieceofgundamwing_archivist
Summary: by Reverand Maynard--Still in the past, in fact, the very evening of 'Yes, Please', the boys relocate to a more distant garden to bury a bit of the past.





	Prince of Siam

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Dacia, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [A Little Piece of Gundam Wing](https://fanlore.org/wiki/A_Little_Piece_Of_Gundam_Wing), which closed in 2017. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after July 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [a little piece of gundam wing collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/alittlepieceofgundamwing/profile).
> 
> A/N: This is a follow-up to "Yes, Please". It occurs the evening of Treize's grandfather's funeral. There are additional notes about the tree if you would like to read them (see the end notes for Zech's story).

The tree was older than Treize by quite a few decades, he was certain. But, as with all dogwoods, it would not grow to the proportions its ancestors once had, so the boys had been obliged to kneel beneath it as they worked about its roots, keeping their heads low to avoid its sweeping limbs. True to form, its blooms had sprouted early while winter still held its reign over the land, and the tiny, yellow wonders stirred with the currents of the wind, hanging about the branches as a heavy, amber mist.  
  
Once finished, they crawled from its shelter.  
  
"Thank you for helping me," Zechs said quietly as he brushed dirt from the damp patches at his knees with mittened hands. The chill of it made him shiver.   
  
"I think it was a fine idea, Zechs. I thank you for allowing me to take part." Even Treize had dirtied his knees, and a few of the flowers clung diligently to his hair.   
  
A stone bench, cracked a bit and crooked where it sat, was placed opposite the tree, and the boys made use of it. It was normal, in the far gardens, for the benches to be broken, for the trees and shrubs to be unkempt. These grounds were rarely used for entertaining . . . rarely used for anything except the occasional bout of hide-and-seek, and even those had grown scarce as late. But this almost forgotten place had one thing that the other, closer gardens did not, and Zechs had been adamant.  
  
The wind blew fiercely. The dogwood trembled. Yellow peppered the ground.  
  
"I don't feel any different," Zechs admitted. "I thought I might."  
  
"You might yet," Treize offered. "Give it time."  
  
Zechs moved to sit a little closer to his friend. The bench was cold on his bottom and legs. Treize put a warm arm around him and squeezed his shoulders.  
  
"How do you feel, Treize?"  
  
"I feel like laughing," Treize answered seriously, and the boy beside him looked up at him in confusion.  
  
"I find nothing funny."  
  
"That's just it, Zechs. My humor has left me. I don't like being humorless."  
  
"It's natural, I suppose," Zechs conceded, returning his head to rest against Treize, his gaze upon the tree, which, for a tree, looked quite content in its sway.  
  
"Yes . . . though I've never been given to accept the inevitable nature of things." A breeze accompanied his words and velvety branches seemed to whisper in agreement.  
  
"There are some things you have to accept," Zechs said.  
  
"Some things are meant to be changed," Treize replied.  
  
"Some cannot."  
  
"Some only seem that way."  
  
"Some _are_ that way."  
  
"Some are very obstinate for being so pretty."  
  
Zechs sat up and looked defensive, "I am not."  
  
The smile could not be helped. "By that declaration, I'll assume you mean to protest being pretty and not being argumentative. But if you are not pretty, Zechs, then I am the King of Siam."  
  
The boy beside him thought hard, his brows knitting with all the concentration of his young mind. "I know I must be . . . favorable," he said the word as if it was the mildest of many unsettling compliments. "I hear it often enough. But I don't think I like the way you say it."  
  
Treize raised an eyebrow.  
  
"It makes me sound so . . . feminine."  
  
If he had had a mind for the fantastic, Treize might have sworn the tree chuckled with him as a breeze rustled through it again. "Can I tell you something, Zechs? You have to promise not to be angry."  
  
Zechs looked suspicious. "You're going to say I _do_ look like a girl, aren't you?"  
  
"Not exactly."  
  
"Yes, you will. Go on. It's nothing I haven't heard before."  
  
Treize was surprised at the hurt he sensed in the boy beside him. "Zechs, I'm not teasing you," he was caught in a knowing glare, "all right, I am . . . a little. But there is no malice, I assure you."  
  
Silence. The wind was still, the tree the same.  
  
"Do you remember," Treize asked, "when I introduced you to Ms. Marat this morning?"   
  
A nod.   
  
"After you left us, she told me I should tell my mother that such fair little girls, even as our guests, should not be permitted to run about in trousers."  
  
This time he was answered by a set jaw that spoke immeasurably of barely curbed agitation. Had his companion been a little older, Treize might have been intimidated.   
  
"So I told her that such fair little boys might not agree," he continued, watching his friend and pleased to see him relax a bit. "And you'll never guess what she said to me then."  
  
Hesitantly, Zechs looked at him. "What?"  
  
"She watched you for a while," Treize began, glad to have the eyes upon him, " . . . a very long while, and then put a hand to her heart and I feared she might have been ill."  
  
"What did she say?"   
  
"'God in heaven,' she said, and I had to catch her. She nearly fell."  
  
Concern flushed Zechs's cheeks. "What was wrong with her?"  
  
Treize leaned down to him, whispering as a conspirator even as the wind changed direction and curious branches stretched to be nearer the telling. "'God in heaven,' she said again after I'd righted her. Then she looked at me, much as you are looking at me now, and as quietly as I speak now, 'He lives,' she said to me, ' . . . a painting could not bear more resemblance . . . I saw him laid to earth myself, and yet he lives.'"  
  
"She . . . she recognized me?" Concern faded fast into distress. The nervous chatter of branches echoed his apprehension.  
  
"No," Treize smiled. "And I told her nothing except that such accusations could be harmful to a young man."  
  
Now Zechs was confused. "Then why"  
  
"She did not see you, Zechs . . . she saw your father."  
  
Zechs's only response was to blink. The wind settled and the tree followed its cue, subsiding to a quiet, constant shivering.  
  
"My . . ."  
  
Not far from where they sat, just beneath the limbs of an amber-misted dogwood, the earth had recently been disturbed. There was no grass on the little patch; only a few yellow blossoms had fallen about the spot. Beneath that, some twelve or more inches, two sheets of parchment lay damp in their resting place. One was written in expert script and began, "Dear Grandfather." It told of a long winter, a restful break from the academy, and a visit from the author's young friend. The other, the ink barely dry when it had been laid in the earth, was scrawled in the labored lettering of a meticulous ten-year-old. "Rest in Peace," it began, and was followed by four names, the last of which looked to be more familiar to the penman, as if, perhaps, by practice.  
  
The tree trembled, shedding a measure of its flowers for the wind to whirl around the boys in its next embrace, a few dropping to adorn the unsettled earth below. The sun had begun to set.  
  
"It is a lovely tree, Zechs." Treize said in a worried attempt to bring his friend out of his reverie. "I find it hard to imagine I'd never noticed it. What was that story again?"  
  
Zechs drew a breath. Perhaps . . . perhaps he did feel different.  
  
"You remember it, Treize. You don't forget anything."  
  
"You're right," Treize admitted.  
  
Branches stuttered impatiently.  
  
"I may have to hide my face some day."  
  
"Yes," Treize replied. "You may."  
  
"But . . . not always. One day, no one will recognize me or my father . . ."  
  
"Only if you live as long as you say you will."  
  
"You doubt me?" Zechs asked, shoulders squared, gaze resolute; he watched the wind push the tree about while Treize struggled silently for an answer. The branches seemed to roil, a storm of saffron and grey. Brilliant light from the setting sun lent ardor to its agitation, making tiny thunderclaps of its thrashing limbs, turning the yellow blooms to countless dots of tenacious fire.  
  
Treize was quiet.  
  
"I suppose it's not so awful . . . being pretty," Zechs said after a while.  
  
Treize nearly started at the boy's words, so rapt was he in thinking how to tell Zechs that he was uncertain the younger boy could truly live so long . . . he was uncertain that anyone could live so long. He was glad to find he would not have to. "It will serve you well, I'm sure."  
  
"Will it? I can't imagine how." Zechs sounded certain.  
  
"And you won't for some time," Treize said. "When you do, I hope you will think of me."  
  
"And what if I grow to be ugly?"   
  
Treize laughed as the last of the sun sank out of sight, the tree little more than a churning, dark mass against the purple sky, its din softening to a murmur. They would have to be back soon. Zechs was shivering against him. "Then I hope you'll remember me anyway. Siam is a lonely kingdom, I hear."  
  
"And I can be a prince again . . . an ugly prince."  
  
Treize gave in to Zechs's fantasies, deluded as they were, with a smile. "Yes. My obstinate, ugly prince of Siam."  
  
end

**Author's Note:**

> Zech's Story
> 
> "There is a legend, that at the time of Jesus Christ's Crucifixion the dogwood was the size of the oak and other forest trees. So firm and strong was the tree that it was chosen as the timber for the cross. To be used thus for such a cruel purpose greatly distressed the tree, and Jesus, nailed upon it, sensed this, and in his suffering said to it: Because of your regret and pity for My suffering, never again shall the dogwood tree grow large enough to be used as a cross. Henceforth it shall be slender and bent and twisted and its blossoms shall be in the form of a cross...two long and two short petals. And in the center of the outer edge of each petal there will be nail prints, brown with rust and stained with red, and in the center of the flower will be a crown of thorns, and all who see it will remember."
> 
> \-- http://pr.utk.edu/ut2kids/dogwood/
> 
> Curiously, in researching the tree, I found that, not only are the "petals" not petals (they are actually called bracts and are there to protect the "crown" in the middle that is the actual flower), but also that the "flowering" variety (that is, those boasting the "petals" that are said to have been so affected by the Crucifixion of Christ) is not native to Europe but the Eastern US.
> 
> What does this have to do with anything? Very little except that the "legend" of the tree is why I (and Zechs) chose it, and since I cannot, in good conscience, place a tree where it does not belong, I've assumed that this tree is a Cornelian Cherry Dogwood, native to Europe and lacking the significant characteristics of its American sibling. I tell you this in hopes that you might make the desired associations, despite the lack of any direct physical connection.
> 
> That said, if it's there, that doesn't mean I put it there. Just because you see it, that doesn't mean it IS there. Even if you do not see it, that doesn't mean it isn't there. Just because I put it there, doesn't mean you will see it, and if you do, that doesn't mean you didn't put it there yourself.
> 
> Right?


End file.
